It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back

The cover of It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back puts Chuck D and Flavor Flav behind bars. Photographed by Glen E. Friedman, who shot many of Public Enemy's covers, the pair stand inside a jail cell and look straight out at the viewer, with the group's crosshair logo above them.

The image fits an album concerned with confinement and resistance, including "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos," a song that tells the story of a prison escape. Writing for The Root, one critic called it "a powerful, powerful image" and read the cell as a statement of defiance, a space that cannot hold them down.

Busta Rhymes, recalling the record's impact, put it simply: "The artwork was amazing." Released by Def Jam on 28 June 1988, the album and its stark cover helped set the visual tone for political rap at the end of the decade.